


Shiver

by PrettyArbitrary



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M, Riding Crop, Smut, Thinky Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:56:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John lived an infuriating lie of averageness that made Sherlock want to unravel every protective layer and lay him out for meticulous study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shiver

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a prompt at the [SherlockBBC-fic kink meme](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/10852.html?thread=53236580#t53236580).
> 
> Many thanks to my exquisitely fierce betas, ivyblossom and thisprettywren!

John was shivering.

He wore it beautifully. The fine tremors coursed through his whole body, his breaths coming ragged against Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock could feel John shaking from inside him, and down where their abdomens brushed together each time John’s back flexed, and along his hips and flanks where his exhausted thighs kept him moving astride Sherlock. Enticing as Sherlock found it, to John it meant weakness, vulnerability, something to hide as long as he could. Shivering like this meant John had finally come undone, only his will maintaining him past physical endurance for the pleasure Sherlock was inflicting on him.

The riding crop was just a formality at this point. Sherlock brushed it across the wheals he’d left on John’s shoulders every now and again in counterpoint to the softer touch of his hands, but when John was this overstimulated, the remote controlled vibrator rings he wore made a far more effective incentive. Sherlock applied them with the sensitivity of a skilled violinist. John had shattered for him over and over again tonight; he was so fragile now, and the point was emphatically _not_ to break him.

No, the point was to keep him just like this for as long as possible, held up on the edge of ruin by his naked will. Sherlock loved seeing John’s will laid bare. It maddened him how the man muffled that extraordinary core of himself under tatty jumpers and ordinariness, only to let it out in crazed glimpses when facing down imminent death or hurling his unquestioning faith at Sherlock with the force of a machine gun. John lived an infuriating lie of averageness that made Sherlock want to unravel every protective layer and lay him out for meticulous study.

And seeing him like this was addictive. Poor John. Watching him come apart for Sherlock was a headier experience than a mere orgasm could ever be. He could drink him in like this for hours if he had his way—and, in point of fact, he did.

He looked down to meet John’s hopelessly expressive eyes. The man barely even begged when they did this, at least not verbally, but everything John felt was there in his eyes for anyone with the wit to read it. Sherlock cupped a hand to his face and stroked a thumb down his damp cheek, then pressed it gently between John’s lips when they parted. He felt a frisson of his own when John licked it, gaze stripped open but never looking away.

That was John’s way of begging. Quite suddenly, the pleasant ache of anticipation Sherlock had nursed for the past couple of hours spiked into a painful demand. He grabbed for John’s hips and held him still to drive into him twice—John’s choked cry of shock was delicious—then paused briefly to decide whether he liked the angle.

“Mmm, no. On your back.”

He rolled them over before John could do more than open his mouth. Protest or agreement: whatever it might have been, it died in a hiss when their weight settled on the marks Sherlock’s riding crop had left across his back. John went still, trying to accommodate the pain. Sherlock smirked, satisfied that John would feel him for days.

Once he felt John’s body go pliant again, Sherlock lowered his head to ravish his mouth with a literally breathtaking kiss, drawing the air from his lungs so that he couldn’t cry out when Sherlock began fucking out what was left of his senses.

He drove deliberately into John’s overtaxed body, navigating the fine line between stimulating force and pain that they both needed to come at this point. With his tongue, he pressed the electric taste accompanying the quiver in his limbs into their mingled mouths, so they could savor it together. The sensations of John writhing, whimpering, arching, and crying out into his mouth under each thrust captured him like the elegance of a complex puzzle. He watched every movement with rapt focus, unwilling to miss a millisecond of it; compelled John’s gaze so that he couldn’t look away when his exhausted body begin to shudder in protest against yet another climax.

Sherlock could, he had discovered, bring John to the point of gasping need simply by observing him intently. One day, he would hold John down and deny him orgasm until he explained exactly what it did to him.

But not today.

It was his last coherent thought before his mind shorted out with pleasure.

It came back online to register John pushing weakly at his shoulders. Sherlock twined one hand in his own fingers and brought it to his lips.

“Sherlock. Move.”

Sherlock obediently caught John’s waist in the loop of an arm and rolled them over, pleased with the resulting effect of John draped bonelessly across his chest. John muttered something incomprehensible but approving into Sherlock’s collar bone. He was still shaking, Sherlock noted contentedly; quaking with pure exhaustion now. He gave in to the temptation to smooth a palm down that liquid spine, and smiled when it coaxed out a shiver of a different kind. All that, and John still couldn’t help responding when Sherlock touched him.

John batted at his arm with kittenish irritation. “Bastard.” He lifted his head to manage a brief glare and enunciated with the care of the cerebrally compromised, “I have work tomorrow, you know. I won’t be able to move.”

Sherlock smiled again and flattened his hands across John’s back, enjoying the subtle shifts of his loose body as he breathed. John made a small noise at the pressure against his whip welts, but didn’t try to pull away. He never minded the little hurts; life had given him an admirably broad perspective on pain.

In a few hours, John would get up, wrap himself back up in appalling jumpers and mediocrity and go mingle with the herds as if that splendid bright core of him were only a fantasy. But underneath, he would still be wearing Sherlock, branded into his flesh and bones. No one but they would know that every unspeakably mundane motion was a product of that magnificent will. No one else would see that beautiful alchemy turning the commonplace into the extraordinary.

He must have been radiating smugness, because John raked a pathetic excuse for a bite over his skin. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you.”

No one would ever have called Sherlock's dazzling grin fatuous if they knew what was good for them. “Immensely.”


End file.
